The visual, gastronomic and winery delights of the Mornington Penninsula to the south-east of Melbourne are well known to the city’s visitors,
writes Brian Byrne. But a drive in the opposite direction can bring rather different rewards.
The city of Ballarat doesn’t have a seaside, and even Lake Wendouree which hosted the rowing in the 1956 Olympics has dried up to a few square metres of reedy water, leaving the old boathouse slipways eerily sloping into grass. But, as the place where the world’s biggest alluvial gold rush began in 1851, it has a rough romantic fascination.
At the height of the rush, some 10,000 people sluiced and dug there for a shiny dream. Most scratched barely a living, but a few major fortunes built a city with fine homes, the essential ‘Royal’ hotel, a university, botanic gardens, and a theatre.
Ballarat today has highly prized Victorian architecture, a wealth of ornate bluestone and brick buildings making Lydiard and Sturt Streets worth the walk. From the town centre, the Grand Avenue of Honour stretches 15km into the countryside, its 4,000 trees sporting plaques dedicated to local soldiers who served in WW1.
The Sovereign Hill attraction reconstructs the 1850s, well worth at least half a day to experience and visualise how tough things were then. School tour kids dress up in contemporary clothes, try nib and inkwells in the school, and go down a mine. They can pan for gold too.
'Blood under the Southern Cross' is a sound and light presentation depicting the Eureka Stockade miner's rebellion against excessive licence fees. It was a bloody episode, but an Irishman at their head, one Peter Lalor from Co Laois, did well politically from it, later becoming an MP for the State of Victoria.
Comfortable in the Mornington wineries, I hadn’t really intended to go to Ballarat. But it was a couple of days well spent, reminding that Australia not so long ago had days which weren’t all wine and roses.
